vaultofthearchonfandomcom-20200214-history
105341-on-carbines-communication
Content ---- Most Devs have weekends off. It's the weekend. I'm not defending them, but most weekends are quiet from them. | |} ---- August 1st was Friday. Unless something majorly breaks for an extended amount of time I never expect communication from game Developers on the weekend. Maybe that's just me :\. EDIT: Beat by Scott :P. | |} ---- ---- Seriously guy? You can't even give people their weekends? Get a life... | |} ---- gamers run all weekend surprisingly... people running the games dont, they work hard during the week. before you get anything all bunched up.. try getting something from w WoW dev on a weekend. seriously...cool your jets | |} ---- ---- More or less. While I don't think there should be any groveling going on, I would be extremely concerned by the forum outcry/extreme repetition of common complaints/mass exodus of players/guilds and would certainly have a Community Manager adjusting their shifts (so maybe less time during the week) to come and communicate with us on the forums. A personal touch, even if its just a statement of understanding, a "we're working on it", possibly some teasers for upcoming plans to fix issues, etc. would really go a long way. | |} ---- the problem being, and I am sure you have seen some of the threads they do post in, after they post the discussion goes off the rails and if people dont get responses or what they like, then it starts to get into locking territory or at the very least having posts deleted. which then lines them up as censoring if they made a thread that couldnt be commented in, then they would be stifling comment there just does not seem to be anything that will work with gamers. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- I mean I've seen plenty of Community Managers in the MMO space handle issues with playerbases, and have been active participants in forum communities/spoken with devs of other games on numerous occasions. It comes across very much as radio silence for the explicit purpose of ignoring or refusing to interface with common complaints here. Sorry. If your game is getting the kind of negative player response that Wildstar is getting at the moment (and denying this, while amusing, can be disproven by casually comparing this forum to other AAA MMO forums), you need to make adjustments to schedules, community manager responses, engagement, etc. to keep your game viable. Two days, even on the weekends, is a significant amount of time in the social media/forum/reddit-verse and a lack of even cursory diligence will continue to result in people feeling dissatisfied with a product and its direction. | |} ---- Maybe it is radio silence. Maybe Carbine just called in a tactical strike on their player base and there's virtual internet B2 coming in to level Wildstar and all of us into internet dust. ...oooorrrrr... Weekends, new drop, and Press Releases are typically gone over 17 times before actually released. That said... "the state of the game".. IF that was the case.. and as people have mentioned D3's Kowtowing after it's release.. I'll even toss in SimCity's Lead, and DICE with BF4. Those responses took more than 30 days to come about. And if you think about it.. we're only 2 months in. A little soon to hit the "Oh god.. hit the PR of the VP button". | |} ---- Which, although its been ignored by basically every White Knight in the thread, I stated as being a factor in my OP. However, I believe (and its my personal belief, I understand if you disagree), that the state of the game is such that perhaps extreme measures like: "Our community manager should make a post or three on his WEEKEND OFF" should be taken. Note: That's not an extreme measure, takes like 10 minutes. | |} ---- I was looking for a reason to post this thread today and talk to someone about it, because I'm in a perpetual state of Mad about anything SWTOR. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=755534 They announced a dev stream for Thursday about Guild ships in a patch about 2 weeks away, haven't posted anything concrete before(community has gotten all its news about this feature thru datamined files on reddit) the stream magically didn't happen, no explanation, no community outreach, nothing. It's now 4 days later and biodrones be defending the radio silence and content not being on the PTR 2 weeks to launch. Highlights include: Today , 05:13 PM | #3 REPORT POST QUOTE Because putting a big, complicated new system onto the last pre-production server always goes smoothly and without delay, right? Today , 05:47 PM | #13 REPORT POST QUOTE Impatient people are impatient. No, you get no info before they're ready to release it because people freak the hell out at the drop of a hat, start screaming 'liars' and basically wet their pants when stuff is changed before it even hits the PTS, much less live. So, relax. You'll get it when they're ready to give it. Today , 06:00 PM | #19 REPORT POST QUOTE Quote: Originally Posted by sepulhead that is fine when the release date is months away now it 2 weeks away and its still more info closer to release thay and you wonder why people are upset? One person on the internet does not equal 'people are upset.' Our forums are NOT this bad. Our devs are NOT this bad. | |} ---- The game beat out all internal benchmarks, and as far as I can tell it's doing just as well if not better than intended. Current analysis has W* matching Lineage 2 in NCsoft's shareholders report, which is quite substantial for a niche MMO marketed to a hardcore community. W* has had an objectively smoother start than pretty much any other MMO I can recall (WoW, FFXI, SWTOR, FFXIV... the list goes on). So where's the emergency? Don't be that guy who shows up to a restaurant on Christmas and complains that they are closed. | |} ---- Guild Flagships. SWTOR. The WoW / EQ2 / EvE Online / Auto Assault Hybrid with Wildstar Housing with a Dash of the XFL. | |} ---- You can always get Chinese food on Christmas... just saying. Edit: Well met, ImpactHound. | |} ---- This was the origin of Jewish families having Christmas meals at Chinese restaurants. | |} ---- ---- My bad for the triple post, failed to load more responses as they were coming in. I mean I would say that the overall volume is still what I struggle with. Many AAA MMO companies are very bad at responding to player concerns, absolutely - and often take long breaks from putting anything productive at the forums....but they don't appear to be suffering from some of the critical issues Wildstar is at the moment. I would just think that with the state of things/unrest as they are, Carbine would be more inclined to live up to that "Devs are Listening" rhetoric and really make a push for more open dialogue. "So we heard you are a bit unhappy, let's see what we can do/talk about/make our philosophy more clear." I've watched the weekly stream, and the Youtube views/Twitch views are absolutely abysmal, and most of the time is spent thwaping the various individuals involved in the streams or making inside jokes. For example: Youtube: The Nexus Report: Class Balance and PvP - July 29, 2014 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ziz4gCnIhksViews: 6,544 Twitch: WildStar Weekly: Frost vs. The World - July 31, 2014 Views: 1,000 The number of folks tuning in for what is supposed to be the Devs primary means of communication with the playerbase is considered...successful? Example 2: (Promotional Content) - 1. Sabatoge DevSpeak - Youtube - 58,000 views 2. Final Fantasy 14 - Patch 2.3 Trailer (1 month oldish) - 260,000 views just from the NA region alone. So if you're being reasonably unsuccessful in generating excitement, hype, communication, player attentiveness, having lots of game problems, seeing some significant drops in subs/activity, I'd get on it. All I'm saying. | |} ---- ---- Hey, if they don't want to do what it takes to continue making money, that's fine. 1. The subscription rate/server population is clearly down well below where even the 1-month drop-off rate should be, especially in a game where people can play themselves into not having to pay for game time. If you think the population isn't an issue, I don't even know what to tell you. There are plenty of games with extremely robust populations on a small number of servers, which also have player housing (this idea that people do nothing but sit in their houses is fine, and valid to a degree-but not completely). 2. I'm not really sure if I would put Lineage 2 up there as an industry leader/example of success. I'm glad its making projections, doing well, etc. - but the writing is on the wall for a significant loss of revenue due to dissatisfaction with a variety of in-game issues, game management, etc. MMOs need to make money over time, and I don't think its unreasonable to think that: A. If you can't keep new players around, you won't be getting lots of money from them in the future. B. If you are only left with hardcore/high play time subscribers, they will have the easiest access to CREDD as a result of their work/investment in the game (which has by the way, completely vanished as a commodity from the AH on I believe-Archon EU? Saw a forum post about that yesterday) - which means you won't get any more money out of them either. C. As with many titles, you will continue to experience a slow drop off rate regardless of what you do as other games open up, life circumstances change, etc. So while numbers may be good right now, without seriously addressing concerns immediately the game will end up in a bad position to achieve any sort of growth in the future due to general industry trends (like sub bleeding over time). | |} ---- Given the crazy budget and development time of this game, yes I will gladly compare this game to what was the worst-released AAA MMO product in history that has now experienced a tremendous turnaround due to diligence. Especially since half the folks in this thread have compared Wildstar's launch to FF14. So yes. Oh, the answer is yes. | |} ---- I can't speak for those other games but here's my thought on your post. In my opinion we hear from the devs a lot. And because we hear from them a lot in various channels people may be less apt to tune in. In other games, like SWTOR you wouldn't hear from the devs for a month or more so you'd have the entire community tune in because that is all the info you were going to get. TL:DR In my opinion the community team and devs communicate a LOT. It just so happens their current communication isn't addressing the issue you want addressed. | |} ---- So what issues are being addressed? If I'm missing stuff, let me know by all means. I'm just not seeing any sort of comment on what most of us (I know it's subjective) would agree are pretty serious issues. Even if we don't think the issues are critical or meaningful, once the "servers are dead" stuff starts filling up the front page of General Discussion - you need to find out some way to respond. Doesn't have to be super informative, can be cagey, etc. - but absolute radio silence is hardly helpful. | |} ---- Cagey answers can be bad. SWTOR got cagey merger answer... that dragged on and on.. apparently like the Guild Flagships are now. And.. it turned ugly before it got better. If they're going to address it, have a concrete way forward. This is where we are, this is what we're looking at, and this is what the problems might be. We need X time. | |} ---- All valid points. I would only counter anecdotally that the vast majority of players do NOT actually have any real interest in a real Dev dialogue, despite saying they do. They want to be told things are good, or hear things are going good from a friend who is into that, and I'm paraphrasing here, "boring-ass CSPAN Cliff Notes." I cite for example the vastly different(and smaller!) userbase that frequents the PTR General Discussion and Game Updates subforums, and the News & Announcements, Bug Reports and Game Updates forums. The devs really are pretty attentive in the proper channels, and the majority of the players still feel the need to post or browse the GD exclusively. If you've been active in a thread at all since launch, you might notice that you're posting in a thread, and when you're done, that thread is now in a completely different forum like Housing, SpellSlinger, or Off-Topic, because the mods moved it to a better fit to encourage the original forum design. We absolutely as a community do not use the sub-forums as much as we should. I see about half the topics or issues created in GD actually answered a week ago somewhere else, and someone just hasn't linked to the official answer yet. | |} ---- Uhh... everything in the dev tracker as far as I'm aware. Those all look to be player raised concerns and they got a dev/community manager response... https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/devtracker/ | |} ---- someone from Carbine has stated in response to the server/population issue, that its "fine" which is what I guess you would categorize as "cagey" but they did respond to the question. | |} ---- ***Sarcasm mode on*** Because with casual content and 2.5 second global cooldowns, there's no difference between playing Final Failure 14 or watching someone else play it. Twitch is cutting in on Squeenix sub revenue because half the players cant tell if they're logged into the game client or a stream at any given time, it's that fast paced & immersive! ***Sarcasm mode off*** | |} ---- xD, the 2.5 second cooldown is a...........bit much, I agree! | |} ---- We must be looking at a very different dev tracker. I see: 1. PVP Arenas (that's important to some people, will give you that one) 2. A complaint about....cooking. Erm. Okay. 3. Lighting in houses. 4. Sabatoge decor complaints (apparently that's a thing) 5. PAX Prime stuff 6. Some technical issues 7. Lots of German and French I won't translate (but some have to do with e-mails, from what I can tell) Still not seeing a lot on high priority issues here. | |} ----